Get your holiday marketing sorted, so you can enjoy a rest this festive season.
There are only so many hours in a day, and we’re all busy.
When it comes to marketing a business, there’s strategies, deadlines, content creation and endless multitasking required to keep up with the continuously changing landscape that is digital marketing.
This is where email automation comes in.
Designed to help you get ahead of the game with your email marketing, automations use data to streamline and pre-set your workflows, whilst ensuring relevant emails are sent to your customers and prospects at an appropriate time.
Email automations don’t just reduce the workload of sales and marketing teams, they also boost the quality of customer interactions, and ultimately, help generate leads.
So, with that in mind, we’ve shared our top pick email automations below (and they’re so easy to implement, you’ll still have a few days of advent left to enjoy a break before Santa arrives).
Transpond’s top email automation picks
Want to make your email marketing easier? Look no further.
- Automated Abandoned Cart Email Series
Almost 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned (source) costing online retailers as much as $4 trillion a year.
Let’s think about that for a moment. For every 100 potential customers, 70 leave on the brink of purchasing, but without making that final step.
How much would your income increase if you capture those sales, instead of letting them walk away, potentially never to be seen again?
This is where abandoned cart emails come in.
At its most basic level, one abandoned cart email could do the job. A simple ‘you forgot this item’ could be just enough to remind customers of that product they were close to purchasing and encourage them to return to your site to finish the job.
To significantly increase your chances of recouping those abandoned carts, you could take it one step further, and send emails with an incentive to buy. Offer a discount code or free gift when they convert.
You could even build a series of emails, that send 24, 48 and 72 hours after the abandoned cart, offering a declining discount, to incentivise a quick decision.
Alternatively, use these emails as an opportunity to list the benefits of the item they left behind, why you’re the retailer to purchase it from, and what they get from you in return.
- Automated Welcome Email Series
When someone takes the time to join your mailing list, it pays to welcome them.
A welcome email is important. They are the first thing a potential customer sees from you, and are 75% more likely to be opened than marketing emails (source), so it’s worth making sure your first impression is a good one.
Your welcome email(s) should set the tone for all your email marketing campaigns going forward. You should provide your new lead with a glimpse into the type of content they can expect to receive from you in the future, and build their expectations on how, and when, they will hear from you.
A marketing tool that shoppers actively engage with, automated welcome emails can (and should) promote your products and/or services in a way that doesn’t appear pushy or forced.
- Automated Just Purchased/Referral Email Series
Has a customer just purchased one of your products or services?
If so, it’s likely you’re sending an immediate email, confirming their purchase, to act as a receipt (if not, you need to set that up urgently!). But this email can include more than just their purchase confirmation and shipping information, it can also include:
- Similar items to the one they purchased
- A discount for next time they buy with you
- Reviews from other buyers
- Contact information
- Teases of upcoming sales or item drops
This email can do more than provide information. It can share your gratitude for supporting your business, whilst promoting your brand and products, to extend their customer loyalty.
Although it’s an essential email, the ‘just purchased’ email does not need to be plain.
- Automated Re-engagement Email Series
After a while, your email recipients will stop opening your emails. It’s nothing personal. But there is a way around this.
Re-engagement emails are a great way to reignite customer interest, inspiring them to begin engaging and interacting with your emails again. According to a report by Return Path, nearly half of recipients who receive a re-engagement email go on to open, and engage with, subsequent emails. That’s worth a try, don’t you think?
Here’s an example process of re-engagement emails:
- Remind the customer of your brand & where they signed up in the first place.
- Give the customer a deal they can’t resist, to entice them back to your website.
- Ask the customer if they’d still like to hear from you. If not, unsubscribe them.
It’s pointless sending email after email to people that do not want to hear from you. It can damage your deliverability and ultimately waste your time. Move on and talk to someone who is interested in what you have to offer.
- Automated Feedback Email Series
Receiving feedback - whether positive or negative - is extremely valuable. So, feedback emails are important.
Although perhaps not as directly impactful on your revenue as previously mentioned options, feedback (also known as survey) emails will encourage customers to think about your brand and how pleased they are with your service or product.
93% of customers read online reviews before they make a purchase (source). So, you should ask for reviews in a feedback email, you can use them to help you leverage revenue.
The same study found that 91% of 18–34-year-olds trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Therefore, if this is your target audience age, reviews are incredibly important to your business and emails are the best way to ask for them.
The key is to give your customers an experience that’s so great, they want to talk about it. A survey or feedback email series is giving them the opportunity to do exactly that.
So, there you have it. Our top 5 email automations that any online business could leverage.
If you’d like to build emails with ease and use automations to help grow your business, Transpond can help. Contact us today https://transpond.io/contactus We’re a friendly bunch.